Tuesday, June 29, 2010

So, my posts have not been of a very personal nature, but, if you want to know how to get my blood boiling, then feast your eyes on the last paragraph taken from The Archaeological Institute of America Vol.63, No.3 May/June 2010 "Clonycavan and Old Croghan Men" by Lobell and Patel.

"The bodies served as offerings to the goddess of the land to whom the king was wed in his inauguration ceremony. According to Kelly, both men’s multiple injuries may reflect the belief that the goddess was not only one of the land and fertility, but also of sovereignty, war, and death. “By using a range of methods to kill the victim, the ancient Irish sacrificed to the goddess in all her forms,” he says."

This seems like a bit of a leap to me - stating that the bodies were an offering to the Mother Goddess....hmmmm...

I just can't bring myself to believe this absolute link with the Mother Goddess - prove it to me! Send me some evidence I can sink my teeth into! Convert me! I am sure Mr. Kelly of the National Museum of Ireland knows a billion times more than me, so I am very confused by all of this.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

ROME — Twenty-first century laser technology has opened a window into the early days of the Catholic Church, guiding researchers through the dank, musty catacombs beneath Rome to a startling find: the first known icons of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Vatican officials unveiled the paintings Tuesday, discovered along with the earliest known images of the apostles John and Andrew in an underground burial chamber beneath an office building on a busy street in a working-class Rome neighborhood.

The images, which date from the second half of the 4th century, were uncovered using a new laser technique that allows restorers to burn off centuries of thick white calcium carbonate deposits without damaging the brilliant dark colors of the paintings underneath.

The technique could revolutionize the way restoration work is carried out in the miles (kilometers) of catacombs that burrow under the Eternal City where early Christians buried their dead.

The icons were discovered on the ceiling of a tomb of an aristocratic Roman woman at the Santa Tecla catacomb, near where the remains of the apostle Paul are said to be buried.

Lecturers from one of Scotland’s leading universities have voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action over job cuts.

The move, by academics from Glasgow University yesterday, means there could be a summer of disruption to student admissions and the marking of resit exams.

A ballot was held by the University and College Union (UCU) after the university management refused to rule out compulsory redundancies in ongoing plans for job cuts.

The university has targeted up to 80 jobs in a number of different academic disciplines, including archaeology, biomedical and life sciences, and the education department.

The union argues job losses are unnecessary because the university is heading for a £6 million surplus and will do lasting damage to the university’s academic reputation.

However, the university argues the job cuts are necessary because of specific financial issues in some of the ­departments, while also warning of future threats to public funding of universities generally.

The announcement on the result of the ballot comes on the eve of a meeting of the univer sity’s ruling court, which will decide on whether to pursue compulsory redundancies.

Mary Senior, UCU Scottish official, said: “There is a clear mandate for industrial action, but we hope the dispute can be resolved without recourse to strikes. The Glasgow University Court cannot ignore its staff and must agree to work together to resolve the situation without forcing job cuts.”

She added: “We are calling on the Court to end the uncertainty for staff in the threatened departments or risk damaging the university’s proud international reputation.”

However, a spokesman for the university said: “We are disappointed at the UCU ballot result as industrial action will only harm students.

“We continue to consult with staff and their unions and Glasgow University will do all in its power to minimise the effects of any action on students and the university as a whole.”

Earlier this year, the university announced plans for up to 80 job cuts in a number of different departments, including the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (Guard).

Established in 1989, Guard is a commercial enterprise run by university academics which provides archaeological services to businesses and public bodies across Scotland.

It is best known for its work on Time Team, presented by Tony Robinson, and BBC2’s Two Men In A Trench, co-presented by Neil Oliver and Tony Pollard, head of Guard’s Centre for Battlefield Archaeology.

After the plight of Guard was featured in The Herald, the university’s ruling court gave it a temporary reprieve to allow for closer scrutiny of its finances.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Diego and Paola Meozzi, the Italian archæology journalists who produce the admirable Stone Pages website, have alerted the outside world to an amazing discovery on the Italian island of Sardinia.

It involves a Neolithic site now referred to as tomba della scacchiera (“the chequered tomb”), near Bonorva. Diego and Paola met a local man, Antonello Porcu, who told them about the site.

In 2007, the Bonorva municipality initiated an archæological survey of the area, where there is a known prehistoric necropolis. This led to an excavation programme in 2008. Despite the lead archæologist saying that they hadn’t yet found anything of interest, Porcu noticed that for several consecutive days workers coming down from the excavation area were covered by rock powder. He queried them in Sardinian (not the same as Italian) and they hinted that something remarkable had been uncovered up in the hills. Their curiosity tweaked, Porcu and his brother went up there. They were staggered by what they found.

Peering beneath a groundsheet placed there by the excavators, the Porcu brothers discovered an entrance passage with a rock-cut façade leading into a large tomb with three side cells. The tomb interior has huge bull horns carved on the long side of the main chamber, whose stone roof is carved in a way reminiscent of timber planks and is painted in dark blue and white. But most striking of all is a series of seven bright red ochre spirals, each up to 70cm across, painted on a side cell; they were executed with skillful bravura. On the roof of a side cell there is also a geometric figure very rarely found in a Sardinian tomb – a black and white chequered motif. The best guess so far is that the monument dates to the so-called Ozieri culture (3800 to 2900 BC).

Stirred by this find, Antonello Porcu informed the mayor of Bonorva. The man was astonished, saying he had not been informed about it by anyone connected with the survey. Fortunately for us, Porcu had the presence of mind to take photographs of the tomb’s interior, because a few months later official representatives of the Soprintendenza Archeological for Nuoro and Sassari (the local branch of the Italian Ministry for Heritage) put a massive block of rock in front of the only entrance of the tomb, filling everything with concrete and covering the whole area with a thick layer of soil, sealing the tomb once again. This was done in order “to protect the tomb against looters”.

The local Sardinian archæological author ities are driven by the desire to protect the site and do not want word spread about it, but Diego and Paola Meozzi dis agree. “Our heritage is a national treasure and must be shared: protection is one thing, but hiding an ancient site indefinitely – even if motivated by preservation princ iples – is something else,” Diego comments. “We wonder just how many remarkable monuments have been found, studied and sealed once again over the years by the archæologists in Sardinia with only a few authorized persons aware of them.” He asks that people around the world send messages to the Soprintendente Archeologico for Sassari and Nuoro (Dr. Bruno Massabò – e-mail address: bmassabo@arti.beniculturali), urging a re-think of the closure policy. So go to it, dear readers. Stone Pages, 21 April 2010.

A concluding observation (remember you read it here first): if we look at the picture here of one panel of the tomb’s paintings, showing spirals either side of a thick vertical line, it calls to mind the arrangement of motifs on the entrance stone to the Neolithic passage grave of Newgrange in Ireland – see the picture of that here also and compare. (Indeed, the motif of spirals either side of a vertical line recur on other nearby Boyne Valley monuments too.) One archæo logical researcher has already noted that the tomba della scacchiera spirals are more reminiscent of rock art motifs in Atlantic coastal Europe than, say, the painted spirals inside the Hal Saflieni hypogeum on Malta. This could all have implications as to who came from where in prehistory –what more might Sardinia’s other hidden secrets be able to tell us? (Archæologist George Nash, one of this columnist’s editorial colleagues at Time and Mind, is becoming actively engaged in trying to encourage a differ ent heritage approach by Sardinian archæological author ities. See Time and Mind for updates in due course.)

Monday, June 21, 2010

This is what I like to see! Not to be confused with Avarice or Avatar...

Very exciting stuff, locating city remains using radar imaging.

An ancient Egyptian city believed to be Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos people who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been located by radar, Egypt's culture ministry says.

A team of Austrian archaeologists used radar imaging to find the underground outlines of the city in the Nile Delta, a now densely populated area.

The Hyksos were foreign occupiers from Asia who ruled Egypt for a century.

Avaris was their summer capital, near what is now the town of Tal al-Dabaa.

The radar images show the outlines of streets and houses underneath the green farm fields and modern towns in Egypt's Delta.

Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said in a statement that the area could be part of Avaris, the summer capital of the Hyksos who ruled Egypt from 1664-1569 BC, during the 15th Dynasty.

"The pictures taken using radar [imaging] show an underground city complete with streets, houses and tombs which gives a general overview of the urban planning of the city," Dr Hawass said in a statement.

Irene Mueller, who heads the Austrian team, said the main purpose of the project had been to determine how far the underground city extended.

"The aim of the geophysical survey was to identify the size of the ancient city and the mission managed to identify a large number of houses and streets and a port inside the city," she said.

"The mission also identified one of the Nile river tributaries that passed through the city, as well as two islands," she was quoted as saying in the statement.

Monday, June 14, 2010

A collection of tiny, broken ceramic feet, ornate goggle-eyed statues and the famed ‘Grimes Grave Goddess’ are among 100 prehistoric figurines going on show at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts next week to enable a comparison between a matching (but totally unconnected) tradition of human model making in Japan and Europe thousands of years ago.

‘Unearthed’ features six ornate Jomon figurines (known as dogu) from Japan which are up to 16,000 years old. The beautifully carved statues are remarkably well complimented by a collection of Neolithic and Eneolithic statues from the Balkans which date back 8,500 years.

The exhibition creators say the comparison of both sets of figures made by villagers in totally unconnected regions, has thrown up “intriguing similarities and differences.” Many of the statues have been made to be hand held and are typically about 5 cm in height (2.3cm at smallest). Both sets are made from similar materials and have breaks in similar places.

"There may never again be the chance to see this many ancient objects from the worlds' two great figurine traditions together in one exhibition. It is impossible to look at these evocative European figurines and Japanese dogu and not be transported to mystical worlds from deepest prehistory,” said the exhibition’s curator Douglass Bailey, of San Francisco State University.

Bailey said the exhibition’s purpose was to question the use of the figurines in both cultures to add to both an historical, anthropological and archaeological knowledge. He wants visitors to ask: What did these objects mean to their makers? Were they goddesses and gods? Were they toys? Were they portraits? To help explore these questions visitors to the exhibition will be given a biscuit-fired figurine by artist Sue Maufe.

“Small things, especially ones that look human, allow us to think about our place in the world in new ways. [The exhibition] develops this notion and creates fresh opportunities for us to reconsider who we were in the past, who we are today, and who we want to be,” said Andrew Cochrane, unearthed curator, University of East Anglia.

'Unearthed' opens on Tuesday 22nd June and runs until Saturday 29th August at the Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich www.scva.org.uk

An archaeological dig will get underway at the site of an old pond at Aberdeen's Duthie Park today [Monday 14 June 2010].

The dig and restoration of the pond are part of exciting plans to breathe new life into Aberdeen's historic Duthie Park by Aberdeen City Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), who are joint funders of a scheme to restore the 44-acre Victorian park to its former glory.

The circular pond, an original feature of the 1883 park layout, is situated in the lower car park area. The pond was infilled in the 1920s when the model yachting pond was extended and laid with turf. The stone steps leading down to the pond from the former terraced walkway were removed in the 1960s.

The first phase of the archaeological fieldwork will include the excavation of 2 trenches across the location of the original pond (to initially assess of the condition and survival of the structure and to identify building materials); and a third trial trench will be excavated across the location of the stone steps leading southwards from the terraced footpath (to assess the level of survival of the steps).

The specific objectives of the fieldwork are to:

identify the presence/absence of the 1883 circular pond feature;

identify the presence/absence of the 1883 stone steps;

determine the condition of any surviving original building materials;

identify where original building materials can be reused to form the new elements.

The dig will take a minimum of two days.The second phase will occur if substantial remains of the original pond structure are observed in the trial trenches.

"If one finds something once, it's accidental. If it is found twice, it's puzzling. If found thrice, there is a pattern," the archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte say.

In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.

"It became clear to us quite early that the grave had been plundered. The material in the grave had been messed up and now contained brick and porcelain fragments from younger layers of soil," Hemdorff says.

Plundering of graves was very common in the 19th century and actually legal. It was not until the Cultural Heritage Act in 1905 made it a criminal offence for lay persons to excavate cultural monuments.

Axes and pearls

The German archaeologist Eva Thäte is in the spring of 2010 visiting researcher at the Museum of Archaeology. She is also a guest researcher at the University of Chester in England. The cooperation with Hemdorff started in 2003 when Thäte came to Stavanger in connection with a doctoral work on the recycling of ancient tombs. The latest research project carried out by the two archaeologists is on finds of older artifacts in younger graves. In the grave at Avaldsnes the researchers found seven handsome glass pearls in the dirt.

"In the late Iron Age glass was the most common material for making pearls, and therefore glass pearls are often found in men's and women's graves from this period. The women wore the pearls in a cord around the neck and brought more pearls with them into the grave than men did. The discovery of the seven pearls made us assume that it was a woman's grave we investigated," Hemdorff says.

"But then we suddenly found a stone axe. It was in the same layer of soil as some of the pearls. The axe is from the Stone Age and more than a thousand years older than the pearls! It is a so-called greenstone axe. All the other indicators suggested that the cairn was from the Iron Age and belonged to a buried woman. So why was there an old axe from the Stone Age in the grave?," the archaeologist asks.

Not accidental

During the last three years documented discoveries of artifacts have been made that are typical for the Stone Age -- marks from flint, flint fragments, quarts, axes, etc. in younger burial mounds.

"Unfortunately this documentation did not begin until the 1970s. Up to that date neither archeologists nor grave robbers were aware of these objects. They were just seen as unimportant and without archeological value. It is only now that we are beginning to have enough data for analysis, and we have made many enough discoveries of Stone Age artifacts in younger graves to say that they make a clear pattern," Thäte says.

She points to a good example from Sogndal in Sogn og Fjordane where a stone axe was found in an untouched stone coffin from the 5th century.

"The axe must have been placed there intentionally. Other finds in Scandinavia make this pattern even clearer. In Halland in Sweden they have found a burial site consisting of almost one hundred graves from the late Iron Age where one has registered processed flint objects in nearly every grave," Hemdorff says.

Starting with the finds around the grave at Avaldsnes and taking the other finds into account, it is not likely that the axe ended up in the grave by accident. Why was it deposited there?

Thunderstones from the sky

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from earlier times that connected them to their past.

"People probably considered old objects as a heritage from their ancestors. Recycling of old burial mounds for new graves is an indication of this relationship. The idea was that the mounds were memories from a distant past, and written sources indicate that recycling of mounds had a double function. Apart from providing a grave for the dead they also legitimized property and rights. People asserted their control over an area by burying their family in a gravesite belonging to their ancestors," Thäte explains.

The archeologists think that people in pre-history were superstitious and that the axe was deposited in the grave as a part of the burial ritual.

"People believed that the lightning created thunderstones and that individuals who owned such stones would not be hit by the lightening," Hemdorff says.

The idea of a rock falling from the sky caused by lightening is known all over the world. It is certainly found in Roman times and it is connected to objects like meteors, flint stone axes and petrified sea urchins.

"According to folklore a flint axe might protect against lightening and function as a kind of charm," Thäte says.

In Northern Europe the old idea of the thunder god Thor, who throws his hammer when lightning strikes, is common property. It was alive all the way up to the 19th century.

"Thor's mission was to protect gods and people against evil and chaos and it was therefore believed that Thor's rocks protected houses and people. Two things seem to be important when choosing thunderstones: The form had to be similar to an axe or a hammer, that is a ground stone or flint, or the stone had to have "flaming" properties, which flint and quarts have," Hendorff says.

Phallus and fertility

"Both the form of the axe and the flint stones to make fire may be associated with fertility. Thor's hammer is clearly linked to fertility and prosperity. The hammer is a phallus fertilizing the soil, which gives it apotropaic quality, i.e. it has the ability to protect against evil and accidents," Thäte explains.

Since people imagined that thunderstones fell to the ground in connection with lightning, it is possible that the rocks incorporated some of the qualities of lightening or had the power to create a bright light.

"Here is a clear pattern once more. We find old artifacts made of flint in the younger burial mounds. Flint had a strong symbolic power. The stones created fire and were seen as important objects. They can also symbolize the power of lightning," Hemdorff says.

The Avaldsnes axe

But now back to the axe at Avaldsnes and the question why it was in the plundered grave.

"If you consider how widespread the idea of thunderstones was all the way up to the 19th century, and how common superstition was, it is not unlikely that the grave robbers left a protective amulet to make up for their misdeed. After all they opened a grave and committed sacrilege. Maybe they hoped that the axe provided protection against the spirit of the dead and their ghosts," Hemdorff says.

More excavations of graves and houses with unusual artifacts and comparing them to data from different places will probably yield an even clearer pattern.

This grim news came to light in the late spring of 2003, after the dust had begun settling from the invasion of Iraq and archaeologists began taking stock of the country’s looted archaeological sites. To measure the severity of the problem and determine when most of it had occurred, Elizabeth Stone, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, purchased a series of high-resolution commercial satellite images taken of southern Iraq just before and after the invasion. Stone pored over them, examining known sites and measuring the extent of looters’ pits over time. These scars on the landscape can be seen from space.

Much of looting, Stone discovered, occurred just before and just after the invasion. And the total area pillaged, she noted in a 2007 paper in Antiquity, “was many times greater than all the archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands.”

It was a grave situation, one requiring intervention from Iraq’s new government, and Stone let everyone know what she had learned. At one point, she flew out to California to give a lecture on the subject at Stanford University, and as sometimes happens, her talk galvanized a young post-doc, Daniel Contreras. Contreras had put in several field seasons as an archaeologist in Peru: he had found the scale of looting there staggering. “You can’t drive down the Panamerican highway without seeing looters’ pits,” he says. “So looting is really never off the radar there.”

Contreras wanted to start quantifying looting in Peru, à la Stone. But satellite photos are pricey, and Contreras couldn’t afford to buy them. So he and Stanford colleague, Neil Brodie, an archaeologist who specializes in looting issues, started casting around for something much cheaper. What they discovered is that Google Earth photos work just fine. So in the current issue of Antiquity, Contreras publishes the results* of his Google Earth study of looting in Peru’s Vir’u Valley, concluding that a whopping 116 acres of sites in this relatively small valley show intensive damage.

Ok, I know, this still doesn’t sound like good news. But I thought Contrera’s study was ingenious, so I called him up this week to talk about it. Just before hanging up, I asked him whether this might be the beginning of a much larger project, one that enlists the sharp eyes of the Google Earth community and anyone else with an interest in archaeology to keep an eye on the world’s looting hotspots. Could archaeologists crowdsource the monitoring of the our collective archaeological heritage?

“Definitely,” he said, without a moment of hesitation. In fact, he’s now thinking of how to go about doing just that. The technology is all there, he said, it’s just a question of how to administer it. “And I think this would make people a little more aware of the problem of looting, as well as providing a tangible source of documentation for archaeologists.”

Facts and figures of this type are exactly what archaeologists need the next time they press for stricter laws on the looting and sale of antiquites. And I think this new Google Earth study is very good news.

This article presents a new initiative in combating looting from the air, building on previous work in Iraq and Jordan. Looted sites in the Virú Valley, Peru, are visible as pit clusters on dated versions of Google Earth. Compare these with earlier air photographs and Gordon Willey's famous survey of the 1940s, and we have a dated chronicle of looting events. This makes it possible to demonstrate that modern looting is certainly taking place and linked to an upsurge in the antiquities trade. As well as being a new instrument for managing heritage, the author shows that the looting survey offers an important research dividend: the location of cemeteries not previously systematicalldocumented, with potential for more thorough investigation even of already looted areas.

A replica of Christopher Columbus' famous ship will be dropping anchor in Peoria next month.

The Nina has stopped in Chillicothe and Peoria several times in the last 15 years, but this year the wooden, sea-going vessel is back - this time with its sister ship, the Pinta.

The replica ships will dock from July 9 to July 12 at the RiverPlex landing adjacent to the Spirit of Peoria.

"Little children love scrambling around the ships, and school-aged children study Columbus and his ships," said A.J. Sanger, a spokesman for the Columbus Fund. "Older people can appreciate and admire the work that went into building (the ships) ... and think about how small (it was) for men to go to sea in."

The Nina was built completely by hand and without the use of power tools in Bahia, Brazil, in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' entry into the new world. Archaeology magazine dubbed it "The most historically correct Columbus replica ever built." The boat is 93 1/2 feet long and about 52 feet tall and was featured in the film "1492."

The Pinta is a larger version of the Nina, which allows it to accommodate more people at one time.

The Pinta's deck length is 20 feet longer at 85 feet, and its sail area, about 3,800 square feet, is more than twice that of the Nina. It holds a 40-foot air conditioned main cabin below deck with seating and is available for private parties and charters.

Both ships are on tour year-round, stopping at ports across the country and offering sailing museums that feature not only Columbus history, but the history of the Caravel, a type of ship used for decades in the Columbus' era to explore the world.

The Nina and Pinta will be coming to Peoria from Hammond, Ind., and going to Burlington, La.

The last time the Nina docked in Peoria in 2007, visitors to the ship numbered between 8,000 and 10,000.

It's a sacrifice Americans said they would never forget. And today, more than 68 years since a group of young U.S. servicemen in a B-17E Flying Fortress crash-landed in a primitive New Guinea swamp, a group of the air crew's surviving relatives and supporters will welcome home the fallen aircraft to honor the heroes of World War II.

A formation flyover by a vintage P-51 Mustang and P-40 Warhawk above the Long Beach Harbor will launch a ceremony to unveil the recovered bomber, nicknamed Swamp Ghost and known by historians as the Holy Grail of military aviation. A flag presentation by the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard and remarks from recovery team members will highlight the event, to be held at 10:30am in the parking lot of The Reef restaurant, 880 Harbor Scenic Drive, where the plane's remarkably intact front fuselage will be on display.

First spotted by an Australian Air Force crew in 1972, the incredibly difficult efforts to salvage and export the plane were initiated by the late Specialty Restaurants Corp. founder, World War II veteran and antique aircraft collector David Tallichet in the mid-1980s.

John Tallichet, president and CEO of Specialty Restaurants Corp., said of his father's life work, "My father was a young B-17 pilot flying out of England with the Bloody 100th Bomb Group during World War II. He never lost his passion for aviation or love of his combat aircraft, the venerable Flying Fortress. Sadly, my father could not be here to witness his dream fulfilled. However, my family is honored to continue his vision of preserving this invaluable relic of aviation history for the benefit of future generations."

In 1996, aircraft salvage efforts were carried forward by Aero Archaeology founder and aircraft recovery enthusiast Alfred Hagen, who has located seven missing World War II aircraft and returned more than a dozen missing in action airmen to the U.S. for burial with full military honors. "Much of my work has been to honor those whom we have come to know as the 'Greatest Generation' and we look back on their accomplishments for inspiration," said Hagen.

Unfortunately, the aircraft's last four surviving crew members died shortly before Swamp Ghost returned to the U.S., one of bombardier Richard Oliver's last wishes. His death last year denied him the privilege of seeing his warbird come home, but his widow Linda Oliver will attend the ceremony in honor of her late husband. A handful of other air crew family members will also be present.

Swamp Ghost will be restored, possibly to flying condition, for permanent display at an aviation history museum. For more information, high resolution photos or video, visit http://aeroarchaeology.com/.

When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found in Maryland.

Now, deeper excavation at the site — the front lawn of a modest rental house — is yielding details of much earlier settlement, extending its history back to at least 3,000 years ago.

"As far as I know, it's older than anything in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, perhaps the oldest structures in the Chesapeake region," said Ann Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach, leader of the dig.

And that's just the age that's been established by carbon 14 dating. Slicing deeper in the sandy bluff overlooking the Patuxent's broad marsh, Luckenbach's crew has found stone tools suggesting humans were exploiting the river's abundance as long as 10,000 years ago.

Called Pig Point, the site is producing a gusher of ancient artifacts —decorated pottery, tools crafted from stone and bone, ornaments and food waste that have begun to fill in the details of life along the Patuxent River centuries before Europeans arrived.

"Some of the ceramics that have come out of this site are really just astounding," said Maureen Kavanagh, chief archaeologist at the Maryland Historical Trust and a specialist in ceramics.

There have been pot fragments with incised angular decorations or rims crimped like a pie crust — both different from any ever found in Maryland. Diggers found an intact paint pot the size of a child's fist, and a miniature, decorated pot the size of a thimble.

"These really have us scrambling to figure out what they represent," Kavanaugh said. "Some of these artifacts are one of a kind, and we don't have an easy way of fitting them into our mental template … It's a great, great site."

Archaeologists say some of their discoveries are so exotic in this region, they suggest Pig Point was a center of trade among native people as far-flung as Ohio, Michigan and New York.

Even today, the town site overlooks broad expanses of wild rice and Tuckahoe — river plants that would have helped to feed the native people. Geese, heron, osprey, bald eagles still patrol the shores. Tiny fish roil the shallows.

Trash middens unearthed in the dig are yielding the remains of freshwater mussels, oysters, fish, beaver, muskrat, otter, deer, duck, nuts and more. Archaeologists have also found carbonized corn kernels, evidence of agriculture.

"It's one of the biggest marshes on the East Coast. You couldn't have starved here if you tried," Luckenbach saidTrained in prehistoric archaeology, but best known for leading excavations of Anne Arundel County's colonial-era "Lost Towns," Luckenbach said Pig Point has changed the arc of his long career as the county's chief archaeologist.

"I've been waiting 20 years for the right Indian site," he said. "And here we are at Pig Point."

Work at the site began in April 2009, after the owner, William Brown, contacted the county archaeology office about the artifacts he'd been finding. The dig began soon after in the front yard of a rental home on the property.

"This has made me very happy," Brown said of the dig, which he has joined as a volunteer. "It's my opportunity to learn about the people who lived here before us. I'm fortunate I have the time to be here with them, and through every step of it."

Funded this year by Anne Arundel County and a $32,000 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust, the work at Pig Point has astonished Chesapeake archaeologists, who rave about the fine preservation of artifacts and deep layering of the soil.

"Archaeologists just live for these nice, layer-cake sites where the oldest [artifacts] are the most deeply buried, until you get to the modern stuff on top," said Richard J. Dent, professor of anthropology at American University in Washington.

When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found in Maryland.

Now, deeper excavation at the site — the front lawn of a modest rental house — is yielding details of much earlier settlement, extending its history back to at least 3,000 years ago.

"As far as I know, it's older than anything in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, perhaps the oldest structures in the Chesapeake region," said Ann Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach, leader of the dig.

And that's just the age that's been established by carbon 14 dating. Slicing deeper in the sandy bluff overlooking the Patuxent's broad marsh, Luckenbach's crew has found stone tools suggesting humans were exploiting the river's abundance as long as 10,000 years ago.

Called Pig Point, the site is producing a gusher of ancient artifacts —decorated pottery, tools crafted from stone and bone, ornaments and food waste that have begun to fill in the details of life along the Patuxent River centuries before Europeans arrived.

"Some of the ceramics that have come out of this site are really just astounding," said Maureen Kavanagh, chief archaeologist at the Maryland Historical Trust and a specialist in ceramics.

There have been pot fragments with incised angular decorations or rims crimped like a pie crust — both different from any ever found in Maryland. Diggers found an intact paint pot the size of a child's fist, and a miniature, decorated pot the size of a thimble.

"These really have us scrambling to figure out what they represent," Kavanaugh said. "Some of these artifacts are one of a kind, and we don't have an easy way of fitting them into our mental template … It's a great, great site."

Archaeologists say some of their discoveries are so exotic in this region, they suggest Pig Point was a center of trade among native people as far-flung as Ohio, Michigan and New York.

Even today, the town site overlooks broad expanses of wild rice and Tuckahoe — river plants that would have helped to feed the native people. Geese, heron, osprey, bald eagles still patrol the shores. Tiny fish roil the shallows.

Trash middens unearthed in the dig are yielding the remains of freshwater mussels, oysters, fish, beaver, muskrat, otter, deer, duck, nuts and more. Archaeologists have also found carbonized corn kernels, evidence of agriculture.

"It's one of the biggest marshes on the East Coast. You couldn't have starved here if you tried," Luckenbach saidTrained in prehistoric archaeology, but best known for leading excavations of Anne Arundel County's colonial-era "Lost Towns," Luckenbach said Pig Point has changed the arc of his long career as the county's chief archaeologist.

"I've been waiting 20 years for the right Indian site," he said. "And here we are at Pig Point."

Work at the site began in April 2009, after the owner, William Brown, contacted the county archaeology office about the artifacts he'd been finding. The dig began soon after in the front yard of a rental home on the property.

"This has made me very happy," Brown said of the dig, which he has joined as a volunteer. "It's my opportunity to learn about the people who lived here before us. I'm fortunate I have the time to be here with them, and through every step of it."

Funded this year by Anne Arundel County and a $32,000 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust, the work at Pig Point has astonished Chesapeake archaeologists, who rave about the fine preservation of artifacts and deep layering of the soil.

"Archaeologists just live for these nice, layer-cake sites where the oldest [artifacts] are the most deeply buried, until you get to the modern stuff on top," said Richard J. Dent, professor of anthropology at American University in Washington.

About Me

I am a researcher, studying for a PhD in 18th Century Historical Archaeology (The Hell-Fire Clubs). I also delve into the archaeology of other time periods all over the world, I dabble in anthropology and have studied Art History extensively.